Proletariat Blogging in the Heart of (UK) Predatory Capitalism! Exploring the Interface between Matter and Perception, Chinese Buddhism, Daoism, Hakka Ethnography, and All Aspects of Radical Politics, History, Psychology and Philosophy – 全世界无产者联合起来!
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
8Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
12But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
Toppled statues lay in deconstructed heaps – but the meaning such devices represent carries-on regardless into the uncharted future. Objects can be smashed – that is easy – but equally new objects can be designed and constructed – this is a matter of collective action and progressive thought. It does not really matter what William Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote Sonnet 55 – when I heard it today in both Old and New English – it struck me that he had perceived a deeper (hidden) meaning in passing outward structures. Structures that by there very nature, must, at one point or another, pass away into oblivion. But there is hope of a re-birth – even if the Bard couches this reality in the terms of “Judgement day”!
Only then did the newly franchised Bourgeoisie begin to routinely mimic the upper-class they had politically replaced as controllers of the means of production – following the 1649 CE execution of King Charles I – and extensively educate their children in literacy (and all kinds of other academic subjects). After 1649 CE – this type of Bourgeois education slowly began to develop – but certainly did not happen to any great extent prior to this date. In this regard, Shakespeare seems historically out-of-place – like a technologically sophisticated and advanced artefact discovered on the floor of an ancient cave – how did such an object arrive in this position?
The first was in 1992 – purchased from a local WH Smiths in a place called ‘Tiverton’ in East Devon (I believe during the time that my Irish grandmother – Gladys Kilmurray – was very ill and when her British daughter and American grandchildren were visiting the UK from Seattle, US) – whilst the second was acquired from The Works in Torquay High Street in 2007 (five-years after my family had uprooted and migrated to the South Coast). Both are superb editions with the first being easy to carry around whilst the latter is a very large, impressive and “Grand” Limited Library Edition – designed as a “Reference” copy only NOT to be borrowed or moved about (it is far too heavy for that)! The first is compact – whilst the second is lavishly illustrated and easy to read.
Marx and Engels, from the historical reality of class struggle and the social role of literature, have historically affirmed Shakespeare’s revolutionary position, possessing both the viewpoint and method of the proletariat.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 